How Effective is Radiotherapy?

Executive Summary

• Radiotherapy is presented as effective against cancer.
• What is the actual effectiveness of Radiotherapy?

Introduction

Centers that provide radiotherapy treatment usually do not discuss the general effectiveness of chemo. This article will delve into this topic.

About Radiotherapy

The first thing that I found interesting was that I could not quickly find the effectiveness of chemotherapy when I searched for this. I found no articles with the title of the one you are reading — which is “How effective is radiotherapy?” Instead, nearly all the articles I received for my query explained how radiotherapy works — which is not the same question. Many of the articles returned by Google were titled some variant of “How radiotherapy works.”

However, why is my search term being replaced by Google?

Important Point #1: Is There a Type of Palliative Radiotherapy?

The following explanation of radiotherapy from Cancer Research.uk provides curious information immediately.

Radiotherapy to relieve symptoms is also known as palliative radiotherapy. Palliative radiotherapy aims to shrink cancer, slow down its growth or control symptoms. It doesn’t aim to cure cancer.

Depending on the type of cancer you have, and where it has spread to, you might have external or internal radiotherapy. External radiotherapy is the use of radiation to destroy cancer cells from outside of the body. Whereas internal radiotherapy means having radiation treatment from inside the body.

You might have palliative radiotherapy to:

relieve bone pain
treat pressure on the spinal cord (spinal cord compression)
shrink a tumour to relieve pressure or a blockage
treat symptoms of cancer in the brain
treat symptoms of cancer in the lungs
control an ulcerating cancer and reduce bleeding
treat a blood vessel blockage in the chest called superior vena cava obstruction (SVCO)
Not all cancers respond well to radiotherapy. So other treatments such as surgery, chemotherapy, hormone therapy or targeted cancer drugs may be more help.

The following is an excellent example from The Telegram, which asserts that radiotherapy saves lives without pointing to the evidence before discussing how effective this advanced radiotherapy is.

Important Point #2: 40% of People Who are Cured Receive Radiotherapy

Radiotherapy is one of the cornerstones of cancer treatment; 40 per cent of people who are cured receive it and recent advances mean it can now be delivered with remarkable precision.

“Radiotherapy is curative, cutting-edge and cost-effective. The more we invest in fine-tuning it, the more patients we will be able to save in the future.”

Ok — so where is the link included in the article to the measured benefits of radiotherapy?